Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)

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A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame.

Rabindranath Tagore

Mission

WAC at Berkshire Community College (BCC) supports divisions, departments, and individual faculty with the integration of and appreciation for meaningful reading and writing coursework. As an integral aspect of the learning process, writing empowers students to engage with complexity, reflect on significance, discover new avenues of agency, and communicate effectively. Within each classroom, for every field, and across all disciplines, writing fosters the comprehension, curiosity, and connections that deepen knowledge, on campus and beyond. All BCC WAC initiatives look to honor and to galvanize our community as readers and writers.

Principles

Committed to the philosophy and practices outlined by the International Network of WAC Programs (INWAC), WAC at BCC recognizes that:

  • Effective writing is a shared goal and writing instruction is a shared responsibility;
  • Sustained and ongoing opportunities for writing and receiving feedback deepen student engagement and writing proficiency;
  • Writing is rhetorical, dependent on the context, purpose, and conventions expected within any specific situation and every academic discipline; and
  • Individually and socially, reading, writing, and critical thinking foster reflection, imagination, self-awareness, and the exchange of ideas essential in nourishing a healthy, functional democracy.

Goals

WAC at BCC looks to strengthen collaboration and cooperation among different academic divisions and between faculty and students. Our goals include:

  • To encourage, among faculty and students, the awareness of writing as a process, which is integral to all learning and which develops over an extended period of time (rather that in one course or over only one semester);
  • To broaden and deepen student engagement;
  • To support faculty with the integration of more writing, writing instruction, and supportive feedback within their courses;
  • To facilitate faculty initiatives to explicitly teach the research, writing, and revision conventions within their own fields and for which they are experts of their respective rhetorical situations and knowledge;
  • To create a culture of academic integrity and responsible academic citizenship; and
  • To build a lifelong love of learning, at BCC and beyond.

What Faculty Are Saying

"Participating in the first WAC faculty cohort has been exactly what I needed to elevate the level of critical thinking occurring in my biology courses. As a science faculty member, I now have more effective tools to teach and practice the process of reading, comprehension and writing. I look forward to witnessing my students deeper understanding and retention of scientific research."
– Gina Foley, Professor of Biology

"The Writing-Intensive development process has been one of the most rewarding pedagogical activities I’ve participated in. The impact is being felt in all my courses, not just the one that is labeled “WRIN” this semester, as the workshops and meetings with Liesl have fostered, for me, a new way of thinking about teaching. One example: While I was sharing with Liesl my excitement about a newly adopted book – how engaging and well written it is, how the students will love it, and so on – Liesl simply asked if I planned to explicitly address that in class. It sounds silly, but it had not occurred to me to use the book to help teach the students about good writing practices, because I was still so focused on content."
– Chris Laney, Professor of History

"WAC has been an excellent opportunity to share ideas with colleagues regarding a topic which faculty in the physical sciences don’t typically place at the forefront of their classrooms, but which is just as important for professional success as any scientific subject."
– Dr. Jose Colmenares, Associate Professor of Engineering

"Participating in WAC has given me important time and space and help to think about what I ask my students to do and how I ask them to do it. I am three weeks into my first semester after joining WAC and I am already seeing positive results from the changes I have made."
– Dr. Stacy Evans, Professor of Sociology